Re: [PATCH 1/1] umount.nfs: normalize path names during umounts.

[Steve Dickson <SteveD@redhat.com>]

On 03/05/2012 08:04 PM, Myklebust, Trond wrote:
>>> Is there any reason why we actually care about checking the crap
>>> in /etc/mtab on umount?
>>>
>> Yeah... its called backwards compatibility with older distros...
>> Believe, if I could bury mtab I would... in a New York minute! 
>> I just don't see it happening... 
> 
> Yes, but despite all your work, you are just replacing one broken model
> by another.
>
> 
> At least with the current code, they can _see_ that the model is broken
> and have an immediate incentive to move to the
> mtab-is-a-symlink-to-/proc/mounts based model. The latter is in any case
> the only one that is valid in the mount-namespace based world in which
> we've been living for the past 5 years or so...
> 
I do not disagree with what you are saying... The fact the code/model
is broken is unarguably true... Relying on info in the mtab verses 
/proc/mounts is completely brain dead... But those bits are on the 
street and need to be fixed... So the question is how to fix
them...

Sending out a patch that symbolically links mtab to /proc/mounts
would solve this entire problem! But I just can't make major change
like that in established worlds... Who know what people use mtab
for... I certainly don't. Changing mtab to read-only is recipe for
disaster... IMHO... 

Now if we don't want to take a patch like this in upstream 
that's a different story... This patch is basically meaningless 
when  it comes to new Linux distros... I'm ok with that..
But I do think its wise for us to at least try to be somewhat
backwards compatible....

steved.